Saturday, 30 January 2016

2nd-in-command of ISIS in India claims to be a teenager, teenager also arrested in Uttar Pradesh

Mumbai: ISIS recruiter from Malwani not a minor

The Anti-Terrorism Squad yesterday proved
in court that arrested suspected ISIS recruiter Rizwan Ahmed Ali
Nawazuddin alias Khalid, from Malwani, is not a minor and, hence, can be
sent to ATS’ custody. His father’s service sheet and family certificate
showed that Rizwan was 19 years old.

Earlier, the magistrate court had
refused to grant ATS Rizwan’s custody as his family had produced some
documents — certificates of admission in Budha Intermediate College in
Kushinagar, UP, and some certificates from school — in the court saying
he was a minor, following which he was sent to the Dongri child
correction home. After yesterday’s developments, the court remanded him
to police custody till February 16.
Rizwan, who is believed to be the second-in-command recruiter for
ISIS in India after Mudabbir Shaikh, was arrested on January 23 from
Uttar Pradesh. Rizwan was in contact with the four Malwani youths who
left their homes between October-December last year allegedly to join
the terror outfit.Fake documentsThe ATS, which had earlier
obtained Rizwan’s voter ID to ascertain his age, tried to verify the
documents presented by his family and learnt that they were fake.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Dinesh Ahir(investigating officer from
ATS) said, “We may register a case of forgery against his family members
as they produced forged documents pertaining to his age.”New proofsATS informed the court yesterday that
they have obtained information on Rizwan’s father’s (who is a government
servant) service sheet.
In that sheet, maintained on June 12, 2002, his father had mentioned
Rizwan’s age as six years, which meant he was born in the year 1996.
Also, ATS told the court that they have obtained Rizwan’s family
certificate, according to which he is 19 years and seven months old.
Rizwan, who is believed to have visited many places across the
country to recruit youths by conducting meetings, also revealed that his
foreign handler was in contact with almost all the 14 suspects —
arrested recently by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and other
counter terror agencies — to radicalise them and train them in
bomb-making.
ATS may take Mudabbir Shaikh and the arrested businessman from Mazgaon in its custody to question them in the case.

Update (10/2): The Indian Express reports a boy arrested during the initial January 2016 arrests as the 2nd-in-command of Junood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind. While the other boy/man is from Mumbai, this person is from Uttar Pradesh. The man from Malwani, Mumbai, has been identified as Rizwan Ahmed Ali Nazwazuddin.

IS arrest: All my son had was a mobile phone he got from a friend

Standing on the doorstep of a single-storey house with unplastered
walls, she says she doesn’t understand much about these things. All her
son, a Class XII student, owned by way of electronics was a phone that
he “got from a friend a few days ago”. It was this, she is being told,
that was her son’s gateway to terror.

On January 22, he was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad and charged with being the Islamic State’s
No. 2 man in India. After his lawyer said the youth was only 16, a
court in Mumbai sent him to a children’s remand home. The Maharashtra
ATS insists he is 22.

Since a team of dozen policemen in plainclothes came and took him
away, the family has locked up their house and moved to a relative’s
home at an undisclosed location. The mother is here in Kushinagar to
pick up a few things.

“He had no laptop or anything else. He hardly left the house except
to go to school or for coaching. All he had was a mobile phone that he
had got only a few days ago from a friend. I told him to return it. I am
sure my son has been framed,” she says.
The NIA claims that the youth organised conspiracy meetings for the
Junood al Khilafa-e-Hind, an alleged Islamic State affiliate, across the
country.
Their home is in a developing locality adjacent to National Highway
28, where the limits of Kasya town area end. The mother moved here with
the accused and her other children from their ancestral village a year
and half ago because they wanted a good education for the son after
matriculation. The father of the accused, a revenue official, is posted
in Khadda tehsil, over 30 km away.
The youth is the couple’s third child, the eldest of their four sons.
The younger children, in classes VII and III, have stopped going to
school since the arrest.
The accused was enrolled at the Buddha Intermediate College in Kasya. “We wanted him to become a doctor,” says the mother.
An uncle of the accused, a lawyer who still lives in their ancestral
village, says the boy was planning to take the pre-medical test.
Located 320 km from Lucknow, Kasya is a small, dusty town of about
20,000 people, barely bigger than a village, with a bazaar at the
centre.
In the mixed Hindu-Muslim neighbourhood where each house seems to
declare its religion from the colour of the flag atop it — green on
Muslim houses, red on Hindu ones, interspersed with electricity poles
with posters of Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM — few admit to having had any
contact with the youth. Almost all do recall, however, that he moved
around on a “(TVS) Apache motorbike”.
Rajesh Madheshiya, a member of the ward where the accused lived,
says, “We came to know that the accused lived here only when he was
arrested.”
The mother says the youth stayed home most of the time, with “only
one or two friends visiting him once in a while”. “He is deeply
religious, and offers namaz five times a day. He has been doing it ever
since he was eight. His legs even had permanent black marks due to the
amount of time he spent in prayer. He learnt to pray from his
grandmother,” she says.
She says he had been going to school infrequently for the past few
months. “He used to study at home and go for coaching classes.”
On the morning the police came, she says, he was getting ready for
school. “It was around 9 am. He was brushing his teeth. They found
nothing in the house except for the mobile phone.”
Buddha Intermediate College principal Ritesh Chaudhary has records to
show the youth’s poor attendance in Class XII. But Chaudhary clarifies
that he was not known to get into trouble. “He was very docile. There
are a few students in the school who sometimes fight each other, but he
was never part of any such group.”
Chaudhary also talks of the youth “on a white Apache motorcycle”.
It is his Class X school marksheet — showing his date of birth as May
12, 1999, making him 16 years — that the defence has provided as proof
that he is a juvenile.

While the youth cleared his Class X with first division marks, he
slumped the next year, clearing Class XI with just over 40 per cent
marks.
The Class X marksheet was issued by S B Uchhatar Madhyamik Vidyalaya
in Sandi Khurd village, which in turn went by the date of birth in the
transfer certificate issued to the youth by the Junior High School in
his native village.
The principal of Junior High School, Anil Mishra, says he conducted
an inquiry after police approached him for the age of the accused, and
found no record that the youth had attended school. “The transfer
certificate is fake,” Mishra says over the phone
.
At the ancestral village, which is surrounded by mustard and cane
fields, the accused’s family, from the backward Dhunia community of
Muslims, is among the better-off. They live in one of the few pucca
houses around. While Dhunias are traditional cotton-carders, the family
owns eight bighas of agricultural land, and the brothers of the youth’s
father do other jobs — two are in government service while the third is a
lawyer.

Ashraf, a fellow villager, says they are a well-respected family.
“They have never had any dispute with anyone. Even when someone’s cattle
damages their crops, they do not complain.”

Of the youth, the neighbours have only a vague recollection, from his
brief visits. Doubting the family’s claim that he is a juvenile, some
villagers claim he cast his vote in the gram panchayat elections last
December.
Trying to understand how the terror trail landed at their doorstep,
the mother wonders about a communal clash in Kasya last October, on
Muharram, triggered by a row over the procession. But she says her son
was not in town that day. “He had gone to his aunt’s place in the
village. We were getting ready to see the procession, but once we heard
of the riot, we stayed at home.”
In Kasya though, there’s a lot of talk. People speak of a blast
planned at the Kushinagar collectorate; others claim the youth was
directly in touch with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared Caliph of
ISIS.

The mother worries about what her landlord may have heard. “Someone
from the neighbourhood told the landlord we are making bombs in this
house. My son is a polite boy. He never indulged in any dispute.”
The family also wonders if “prosperity” did them in. “A lot of people conspire against you when you do well,” says the mother.

Prove ISIS accused is juvenile: South Mumbai court to defence

In a major setback for the Anti Terrorism
Squad (ATS), the Sewri Court sent the UP-based alleged ISIS
second-in-command for India to a children’s remand home in Dongri on
Saturday.

According to the defence advocate, the accused was under-aged and should be treated as a juvenile. Arrested by the Mumbai Nagpada ATS, along with the Special Task
Force, UP, on January 23 from Khushinagar, in UP, he was charged under
UAPA act and Section 125 of the IPC. He was brought to Mumbai and
remanded to police custody.

According to investigations, the boy was
in constant touch with Yusuf Al Hindi, also known as Shafi Armar, who,
in turn, is in direct touch with ISIS chief Baghdadi, for the past two
years. Yusuf had asked the boy to be in touch with Mudabbir Shaikh, the
arrested Mumbra accused who is also the terrorist organisation’s main
recruiter (Amir) in India. The boy was made deputy Amir i.e.
second-in-command for recruitment. He even made two safe homes in Goa
and another in Mumbai for ISIS recruits, and received R1.15 lakh from
Mudabbir for it. The investigations also revealed that the Goa home had
his name in the agreement.

The courtDefence advocate claimed that the
accused is just 16 years and eight months old, and therefore a minor.
The ATS, on the other hand, claimed he was 20 years old and produced the
election commission documents, which showed he was born in 1996. The
defense, meanwhile, produced his SSC certificate of the accused and
showed he is minor.

He told the judge in court: ‘Galti ho gayi saab.’ (I have made a mistake.)
The court has given 10 days time to both parties to submit age
proofs, including documents of election commission, birth certificate
and school leaving certificate. For now, he has been sent to the Dongri remand home. The ATS has been
allowed to interrogate him, but keeping the juvenile law in mind.

Family claims innocence

When Mid Day spoke to his family, they claimed he was falsely implicated in the case. His mother said, “My son is a bright student who studies in Class 12.
When he was getting ready for college, the ATS came home and picked him
up. We are financially stable and my child won’t take up such a job for
money.”

But, the ATS officers believe the family knew about his changing
behaviour. “The accused had even once tried to make a passport and told
his father to go to Saudi.”

The next hearing in the case will be on February 11.

Alleged 2nd-in-command of ISIS in India is a boy, lawyer says

A magistrate’s court on Saturday sent a youth arrested by the
Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad for allegedly recruiting boys here for
the ISIS to a children’s remand home, as his lawyer claimed he was just
over 16. “The court remanded him to remand home and asked the ATS and the
defence to adduce (more) evidence about his age,” an ATS officer said.

When the boy was produced before the court, his lawyer Chirag Shah
showed his SSC certificate to establish that he was 16 years and 8
months old.
ATS, on the other hand, produced electoral roll from the website of Election Commission where his age is shown as 20. The magistrate then remanded the ‘boy’ to children’s home and
directed the defence and the prosecution to satisfy the court on the
point of his age at next hearing on February 8.

The prosecution said the accused was second-in-command of ISIS in India and was assigned the task of recruiting. He ran two safe houses — one in Mumbai and another in Goa — for the training of recruited youths, it said.
The accused was arrested last week from Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh.
ATS suspects he allegedly radicalised and guided Ayaz Sultan who left the country last month, reportedly to join ISIS.

The ATS has registered a case against Ayaz, former BPO employee. Ayaz
and three other youths reportedly left home to join ISIS after being
allegedly radicalised by the accused. Two of them — Noor Mohamad and Wajid Shaikh — returned in last week of December.